I get this question pretty often.

Someone had in her partnership chart (navamsha) the symbols for a heart attack, but her partner didn’t have them in his direct rasi chart. Her partner had a heart attack when the combination in her chart was activated.

Was it her fault?

I remember when the Great Maharishi Mahesh Yogi passed on. A follower had death signifiers for her guru in her chart that were activated by dasha at that time.

Was it her fault?

I think the answers are no.

Either nothing is one’s fault or everything is one’s fault for everything is in any given person’s chart. Same thing. Pick a side, but if you’re giving a reading, I think the best approach is to say no, it’s not your fault, and it’s not, in the usual sense of the word.

Vasistha’s Yoga talks often of all events in this world being related only as when a crow alights on a tree and at that moment a coconut falls off. The “ignorant” (for lack of a better word) think there is a relationship between the two, but there is not.

The one infinite consciousness alone is thought-form or experience: there is no cause and effect relationship, these (’cause’ and ‘effect’) are only words, not facts. The infinite consciousness is forever in infinite consciousness.

This is a quote from Saraswati Herself in Vasistha’s Yoga.

(How does this jibe with “karma“? Well, as I understand it, even your past actions are just right.)

A friend asks, indeed, all that there is is the present moment, so how can there be cause and effect?

Symbols in the chart are at this level best understood as signposts. That the woman had a partner who would have a heart attack was in her chart at birth, but that was not her doing any more than her own creation itself was her doing. (Or was it?)

Make sense?

What about issues with seemingly more free will like choice of college?

I think they follow along the same lines. We can forcefully mess up our dharma by bad volitional karma or improve upon it, but our dharma is still there.

This is interesting to me, because if the planets were signposts only, why does supplication and appeasement of them by upaya work so well?

In the beautiful Colorado mountains, if we supplicate the trailhead sign it seemingly changes nothing on the trail or the mountain within it. Why do upayas(gems, mantras, yantras, etc.) work?

The grahas (planets) obviously are still very much involved, and they are inside of us (as above so below), but in terms of fault, responsibility, no, I don’t think there is personal responsibility in the personhood egosense (jIva) of things.

If the client is ready for it, and this is rare, you can present some thoughts from the Bhagavad Gita and other sacred books that there is a relationship behind all things and we are the relationship itself not individuals within.

The well known New Age phrase/bumper sticker “Life is the dance and I am the dancer.” was turned on its head to me by a speaker the other month who said, more truthfully I think, “I am the dance and life [Shiva I’d say] is the dancer.”

nimitta maatram bhava savyasaacin

Be only the instrument, O Arjuna. (Bhagavad Giitaa, 11.33)

So basically relax. No, it isn’t your fault, and yet you are the world.

sarvabhuutastham aatmaaanam sarvabhuutaani caatmaniiksate

He sees the Self in all beings, and all beings in the Self. (6.29)

It is a paradox, either very complex, or very simple.

I don’t know about you, but I got my ego kicked in the butt earlier this week. I think it has to do with Mars having entered Leo on the 21st where Saturn has been residing for awhile.

Leo is the home site for ego and feelings of prowess in any given chart. Yes, we all have Leo somewhere in our charts. It is where we are most public, most regal, and most proud, and that is where important lessons are happening right now.

Two enemies and malefics, Mars, one’s passion and drive, is conjoined there with Saturn, Lord of hard lessons and disappointment, as a driving force meeting a limiting force. Tough combination.

I took a walk on Monday evening and all I heard from passersby were arguments. I had problems all day getting anything done. (As a Scorpio ascendent, Leo is in my tenth house.) Things just fell apart.

Indeed, everyone I’ve talked to personally had been riven by almost accidental but devastating arguments for the first few days of this transit. It seems to be better now. I’m not sure why, but I wouldn’t trumpet myself just yet. The exact conjunction around 11:45am Boulder time on July 10th might be um… difficult. And Mars in its apex in the first week of August should be an overwhelming handful of passion, drive, fire.

In fact, the fiery Mars in the fire sign of Leo might be what is responsible for wildfires starting up lately, and I hope our leaders will be careful at this time.

This transit continues until Mars enters Virgo on August 9.

Um, yeah.

We know this as pitta.

A study in The New York Times also says that spicier night time meals lead to higher body temperatures as well. WAM (Western Allopathic Medicine) doesn’t know why, but it’s basic to Ayurveda. Such usefulness is Ayurveda!

I recently had the opportunity to do a reading for a transgendered lady. In the course of that reading I discovered something astounding, something other astrologers flat out do not believe when I tell them: the surgery of the transsexual created a new person astrologically.

The original birth chart held forth as accurate until the surgery. Then the surgery chart was the accurate one for the years thereafter.

I can’t seem to be able to get this published in the standard journals, so I’m going to present some brief casual material here in the hopes that more trans people might get their charts done, and so that the real import of the surgery might be appreciated by all.

For those who think that Vedic Astrologers should adhere only to old Indian culture, please remember that there are numerous references in the ancient textson transgender situations.

Here are the charts.

Our native originally had the rasi chart below.

Note the salient features:

• exalted Saturn, dig bala in the seventh and indeed he had a long lasting relationship that was mixed with a woman whom he married at the start of his Saturn dasha
• Sun and Mercury in the sixth, and he was primarily interested in helping others, often to the detriment of himself
• there is a terrible planetary war between Jupiter and Moon in the third and he had a complicated difficult relationship with most of his siblings and indeed there was a type of war between two of them and a third who had his heart (Moon)

Here is the transit chart for the time of surgery:

Note the

• release or loss of masculinity with Mars setting in the 7th
• Mars almost directly across natal Saturn (masculinity must have been very hard at the time)
• Venus (femininity) exalted conjunct swa Jupiter and Mercury, a future dharma karma adipati yog
  
• the beautiful triangle linking surgery (8th house), influence of Mother (4th house) and loss or international travel (12th house) – the surgery was in another country and was admitted to be a type of excision of the mother’s influence
• Ketu in the tenth transiting natal Rahu aspected by Mars= a pursuit of a public loss of masculine self

And with that, we get a new chart, her new birth chart, the chart of the surgery:

Her new life has articulated a number of important changes that are of this chart alone:

• working life and public opinion of her has turned challenging, reflecting debilitated Saturn in the tenth
• brilliance in advanced medical knowledge has emerged as well as passionate pursuit of academic Buddhism with a superstar Saraswati Yoga: Venus, Mercury and Jupiter in Pisces in the ninth, a better situation than Einstein had. (I predict possible medical school for her or career with medical writing when she enters Mercury dasha in 2013.) This constellation also makes a Lakshmi Yoga, one almost too good to be true. I don’t think this has been activated yet, but she’s still in Saturn period and Jupiter is awfully close to Mercury and there is a Papa kartari on both yogas. I don’t know if that would compromise it. Plus, even Bill Gates had a period when he was toiling in the garage. We shall see in Mercury period if she becomes remarkably wealthy. I wouldn’t expect it to kick in until 2017 regardless.
• she had been dating yes, a Capricorn who has Ketu in the first (a direct depiction of her new 7th house), someone who was more in touch with her masculine side but who was also more open emotionally which was not her type from before and which is also a direct reflection of her new navamsha
• she is now much better at holding on to her masculine side in arbitration in home life (Mars in Libra in the fourth)
  
• she does have the “hungry ghost” of Rahu now in the first and is constantly striving to improve her body and remake herself
• the Pushya ascendant is not lost: she is an active metaphysical healer now, in direct contrast to the more physical Aries ascendant and path she was on before surgery and she uses creativity/art in healing; see below for Moon as the ruler of the first as the explanation.
• Her heart (Moon, i.e., her emotional seat, not her physical heart ) is now very much much connected with creativity reflecting Moon in the fifth.
• Also, her relationship to domestic animals (which I have found to be represented by the fifth house, with work animals represented a la Parashara in the sixth) has greatly improved, reflecting as well her Moon now being in the fifth aspected by Jupiter. The recent difficult loss of a dog had been at a time of dasha planets activating marakas in the new D-7 (which yes, I use for pets), not in the old D-7.

That she had been in Saturn dasha while a man and has engaged in it yet again in the surgery rebirth chart suggests some fixed karma. Perhaps she is meant to experience the lessons of Saturn and here, mere surgery is not enough to block“The Greatness of Saturn” and His important lessons.

She herself says that she believes she has chosen a relatively tough series of challenges in order to learn from them and grow more complete. I see the import of the change of charts to be not so much in changing her life in the big picture ofqualities of dharma, artha, kama, and moksha but in a radical trajectory change or arc of actions to get there.

For example, an interesting thing is that she would have been out of Saturndasha at the end of 2008 but will now have to wait until 2013. Her Mercurydasha, which comes next, should be considerably better in this new incarnation however with that amazing Laksmi Yoga within a Saraswati Yoga, gifts of two female Goddess energies, by the way.

Another thing that would be easily testable is that her relationship with her siblings, difficult before because of a planetary war, and difficult now because of Saturn debilitated in the tenth in the new drekkhana, might reach a place of healing in the Mercury dasha.

The surgery seems to have allowed the setting of a new stage for her to be her highest self. I wish to thank her for her time and emotional investment in answering my questions. Best of luck to you!

In this excerpt, Deepak Chopra talks about being given primordial sounds by the Great Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

“By comparison, the drugs and surgery you are used to using are very crude.”

I think it makes all the sense in the world, using sound to cure.

We are vibrations, even physicists agree.

Like attracts like, Dr. Lad says, and how can an ocean of vibrations not be affected by a (so-called) external cone of sound.